Years ago, I found myself sitting in law school in Moot Court wearing an oversized itchy blue suit. It was a horrible experience. In a desperate attempt to avoid anything like that in the future I enrolled in a tax course. I loved it. I signed up for another. Before I knew it, in addition to my JD, I had a LL.M Taxation. I needed only to don my cape…. taxgirl® was born. Today, I live and work in Philadelphia, PA, one of the best cities in the world (I can't even complain about the sports teams these days). I landed in the City of Brotherly Love by way of Temple University School of Law. While at law school, I interned at the estates attorney division of the IRS. At IRS, I participated in the review and audit of federal estate tax returns. I even took the lead on a successful audit. At audit, opposing counsel read my report, looked at his file and said, “Gentlemen, she’s exactly right.” I nearly fainted. It was a short jump from there to practicing, teaching, writing and breathing tax.

That’s not merely a list of some of Italy’s most famous, most wealthy newsmakers. The names on that list have made news over the past few years for another, more dramatic reason: they’ve all been targeted (most successfully) by Italian taxing authorities for tax evasion.

Putting high profile taxpayers in the crosshairs is likely meant to frighten ordinary citizens into compliance. Italy has, it has acknowledged, an enforcement problem with an estimated $160 billion in taxes going uncollected each year, the third highest rate in Western Europe. For purposes of comparison, the U.S. has a tax gap of about 2-1/2 times that, or $385 billion, even though our population is more than 5 times bigger than Italy’s population.

Some attribute Italy’s high noncompliance rate to a relatively high tax burden together with a mistrust of the government. Still others blame the tax structure. But Rossella Orlandi, the newly appointed head of the Agenzia delle Entrate, had a different take: Italians do not pay tax because they are Catholic.

Orlandi is the chief of the Agenzia della Entrate, or Agency of Revenue. The Agency of Revenue is roughly the equivalent of our Internal Revenue Service, making Orlandi Italy’s counterpart to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. Orlandi’s debut at the Italian tax agency kicked off with a speech outlining her plans for the agency. At the top? Tax evasion. She blamed the country’s heavy tax evasion rate on a dependency on religion, saying:

In Italy, tax amnesties and remissions are our daily bread. We are a country with a strong Catholic environment and we are used to committing a sin and gaining absolution.

Orlandi went on to say that those who commit tax evasion “expect that, sooner or later, they will be absolved. The Catholic environment leads these tax evaders to believe that a tax shelter or a pardon will come.”

Orlandi later referred to the comments as a “joke.” The Catholic church, however, didn’t find it very funny. Orlandi’s statements were blasted in Avvenire, an Italian newspaper affiliated with the Catholic Church. Eventually, Orlandi – now christened “Lady Tax” – was forced to issue an apology, saying, “I apologize if my words may have created misunderstandings or have offended the sensibilities of anyone.”

The apology came just a few days before the most recent economic data from Italy was made public. The data wasn’t encouraging. Italy’s gross domestic product declined 0.2% last quarter, the second straight decline.

Those numbers are worrisome for other countries in the west: Italy has the third-largest economy in the Euro Zone (the term used to refer to those countries which use the Euro as their currency) after Germany and France.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who appointed Orlandi to her position, has been vocal about the need to grow the economy. He’s promised to cut spending and has refused to raise taxes, saying, “on the contrary we will try to continue to cut taxes.” With Italy’s debt load, that doesn’t seem possible. Enter Orlandi with her aggressive stance on increased collections and pursuing tax evaders. That stance is proving unpopular so far.

To date, Pope Francis has not responded to Orlandi’s comments. He has, however, made his position on tax evasion clear. Last year, in his apostolic exhortation (downloads as a pdf), he blasted “widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion” which, he says, “has taken on worldwide dimensions.”

His words were markedly different than those of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, who in 2007, advised, “We must all do our duty and pay taxes as long as they are imposed according to just laws and destined to pay for just works.” Those words were interpreted by some to imply that tax evasion might be justified if those responsible for paying the taxes felt that the money was not being spent wisely, a stance that has never officially been endorsed by the Church.

Leaders of other religions have also chimed in on taxes and fairness. Last year, Church of England’s Archbishop of York John Sentamu, who ranks second only to the Archbishop of Canterbury, seemed to share Pope Francis’ thoughts when he made the payment of taxes a moral issue, saying those who did not pay their fair share were “not only robbing the poor of what they could be getting, they are actually robbing God.”

No matter what Orlandi actually thinks about the role of religion in tax evasion, it’s clear that Orlandi will have to tread lightly in the coming months if she hopes to win the support of the Italian people in her new post. Whether she actually meant her comments as a joke, they certainly weren’t interpreted that way by the Catholic Church. In a country with a rich history of church and state, that’s not likely to make her popular.

It’s clear that the church will continue to play an important role in aspects of Italy’s culture, including government. How the current regime will balance that role may determine how long they stay in office.

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This is not so funny, really. My in-laws came to the US after WWII and have visited their relatives in Italy many times over the last several decades. It is absolutely true that Italian citizens do not believe they have to pay taxes.

In addition to not paying taxes, they also do not believe that they must pay a fee to ride on the public buses or trains. Many citizens just get on a bus and never bother to pay the fare. Then they wonder why their buses have no air conditioning, are dirty, and run on a so-so schedule. Even my sweet, kind-hearted mother-in-law has admitted to me that she has never paid bus fare while traveling in her native country. When I asked her why not, she shrugged her shoulders and said that no one paid the fare, it was accepted practice.

Times are now changing and their relatives who remain in Italy are being required to pay their taxes and it is painful for them. Some properties will not sell simply due to the fact that the purchaser will now be required to pay taxes on the property, perish the thought. Those who own and want to sell are those who are now having to pay taxes they did not pay for decades and they want to shed the burden. I love my family and the culture from which I am also descended. However, as a second-generation Italian-American, I pay my taxes in the US, no matter how much it pains me, and, it does pain me. Italy is a perfect example of what a country becomes if its citizens shirk their responsibility. They have no room to complain, but, complain they will.